Loughborough University Research and Enterprise Office

 By Kate Clift and Clare Edwards

We work in the Research and Enterprise Office at Loughborough University (LU). LU is an established research intensive University which can trace its roots back to 1909. It comprises nine Schools across two campuses (the main campus in Loughborough - located in the middle of England, and London). In 2018/19 we were home to over 18,000 students, 3,800 staff and had an annual research income in excess of £55M.

The Research and Enterprise Office (REO) comprises over 80 staff. It is a centralised service which supports academic colleagues across the Schools to develop new research and enterprise activity and to win funding to support and develop their work. Whilst much of our work crosses team boundaries we are roughly divided into two teams, one supporting Research and the other Enterprise. Enterprise is often defined as maximising the commercial, social and cultural value of research so it is important that the two teams work closely together. The key activities that are supported by the REO are:

In the Research Office we are divided into sub-teams, each supporting a different aspect of Grant Management.

We are both Research Development Managers in the Research Development Team. We support academics and researchers to win external funding and deliver projects in line with funder requirements and expectations, in order to deliver impactful, world-class research.  Each member of the team is aligned to support one of the nine Schools in addition to one of the priority areas of our research strategy.

We work very closely with the Research Support Team who undertake costing of proposals, support the submission process and look after post-award financial management. The Research Contracts Team are responsible for drafting and negotiating research contracts and agreements. The Research Quality and Visibility Team helps researchers and academics to raise their profile with the right audiences, support ethics approvals processes and oversee our submission to the Research Excellence Framework (REF). The Researcher Development Team support the training and skills development of academic and research staff and doctoral researchers. 

Within these teams, individuals have developed specialist knowledge and skills. This may be in depth knowledge about a funder or funding scheme such as Fellowships or it may be knowledge about a specialist aspect of research such as ethics or Open Access. Beyond our immediate teams we are also able to draw on the expertise of colleagues from across campus such as our Research Data Management specialists who are based in the University Library.

We are a very busy office. Last year we handled over 760 new applications and continue to manage around 800 existing awards. The office culture is a positive one. We often come together in small sub-teams to support significant grant submissions to ensure that our academic colleagues can have the best chance of success. We are lucky to work on a beautiful campus with lots of green spaces and in one of the most historic buildings on campus. We work in an open plan office, all based in the same building with access to break out meeting rooms and informal meeting spaces to facilitate collaboration.